How best could Canada measure performance toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

A year ago the British Columbia Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC) set out to ask four questions about the Sustainable Development Goals largely examining Canada’s performance and strategic advantage. At the time the goals were still being negotiated. We published a report called Keeping Score, which was a civil society inquiry into how Canada is strategically positioned on each of the goals. This year we asked thought leaders in Canada how we could measure progress on the SDGs and it is with this new focused information that we bring to publication Keeping Track.

Civil society has long argued that politically lofty statements are useless without timelines and measurable targets. But measuring progress is tricky in a world of multiple variables and unclear cause and effect. Exactly what kind of measurement can we use to indicate that we are achieving what we want when it comes to systemic changes and overarching goals? Indicators must provide a way to measure the change that we seek.